Welcome to Issue 45, where aliens and monsters rule the roost this month! So what’s this all about? Well, we bring to you in this issue the concluding chapter of our ZBrush Character Creation tutorial series, in which the super talented Rafael Grassetti shows us how to tackle the sculpting and texturing of a beautifully freakish monster of Frankenstein. Check out p.55 for Rafael’s tutorial, and stay tuned for next month’s issue where we’ll be beginning a tutorial series on sculpting and texturing “Manimals” (a cross breed of a man with an animal – get it?), with Bruno Melo kicking off the first chapter. So what about aliens, I hear you ask? We welcome Federico Scarbini to 3DCreative this month with a fantastic making of detailing the creation of his recent character piece, Zenoth, the alien from Jupiter (p.63), and as a double-alien-whammy, we also asked Dzmitry Surynovich to bring us a project overview article on his alien scene, Morass (p.71). And just because we love all things rather weird and wonderful here at 3DCreative, you’ll also find some fantastic ZBrush cyclops characters in the Speed Sculpting tutorial section of the magazine this month, in which Gavin Goulden and Jesse Sandifer bring us their interpretations on this classic topic (p.43).

Our interviews this month feature the winner of the recent Steampunk Myths and Legends CGChallenge, Fabricio Moraes. We’ve been working with Fabricio recently on our latest Digital Art Masters volume, and we’re constantly blown away by the quality of his work, so we just couldn’t help ourselves wanting to get to know him a little better in one of our artist interviews (p.7). Our second interview this month is with an old friend of 3DCreative, Gavin Goulden, who will be back with us as a regular artist in our upcoming Next Gen Character Creation tutorial series (starting in July!), so we thought we’d catch up with him, find out what he’s been up to, and force him to spend just a few reluctant moments away from devotion to his Dominance War IV entry. Check out p.17 and then join us again in July for the start of our Next Gen series where Gavin will … be … back! (We’re very excited about the Next Gen series – can you tell? It’s going to be grrrreat!)

We’ve reached Part 4 (of 5) of the Gothic Church tutorial series this month (p.85), where we bid farewell to the wonderful artists who we’ve come to know and love (even more so) over the last few months as they’ve taken us through the modelling, texturing and lighting of a creepy church interior scene. As sad as we are to see Luciano Iurino (3ds Max), Niki Bartucci (Cinema 4D), Roman Kessler (LightWave), Tiong-seah Yap (Maya) and Robert Bergh (modo) leave us with their final chapters this month, we’re also very excited about the final instalment of the series, in which we invite the talented Zoltan Korcsok to do the post-production work on the final renders. So, lots of excitement planned for next month – be sure to check back in with us in June to see the series’ conclusion.

Our gallery features some real delights this month: Rebeca Puebla brings us her latest stunning character, Twisted Dolls: Mistress Lili; Sven Juhlin shares with us his stylised Sgt. Johnson; and Viktor Fretyán – who will be back in next month’s issue in one of our artist interviews – kindly shows us his latest architectural piece, Tadao Ando - Row House, Azuma. All this and so much more in this month’s gallery – check it out on p.33.